Opinion

Colorado Water Institute studying groundwater issues

ByDAVID MARTINEZ Sterling Journal-Advocate

Posted:
01/17/2013 12:17:33 PM MST

Updated:
01/17/2013 02:50:54 PM MST

Reagan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University, holds up a form participants could fill out to comment on South Platte water issues Monday evening. (David Martinez/Journal-Advocate) (Picasa)

Northeastern Junior College's Hays Student Center Ballroom was crammed with about 100 people Monday evening to discuss an issue on the mind of every farmer in Colorado: water.

More specifically, representatives from Colorado State University's Colorado Water Institute spent 2 1/2 hours focusing on the South Platte River and its water tables.

Over the past few years farmers along the river have had issues with rising groundwater disrupting crop growth, while residents in certain areas have dealt with flooding basements.

The Colorado Legislature, in response, passed HB 1278 in 2012 -- a study of the South Platte alluvial aquifer by the CWI to present to the general assembly by Dec. 31.

Reagan Waskom, director of the CWI, said they started collecting data around the area in September. They're searching for everything from historical water levels to climate factors to soil compositions, compiling their own data with those gathered from myriad groups and studies throughout the region.

"It's time for us to come out and more or less be accountable to you all to tell you what we're doing," Waskom said.

The Sterling meeting was the second of three conducted in the area; the first took place in Longmont Jan. 8, and the last will take place in Gilcrest Jan. 24.

He added that the group wanted to listen to concerns and thoughts before they explain the data they've collected.

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They listened to individual questions and concerns in the later portion of the meeting before participants submitted written comments.

History

CWI provided a brief summary of the history for participants, which helped explain how many of the region's issues came about.

HB 1278 is the result of a long, sometimes complicated history of water issues in Colorado, stemming from the very first settlements to the Eastern Plains and the Front Range.

Settlers had started using irrigation as early as the 1860s, but widespread projects didn't start until the 1870s. Irrigators wanted to move farther from the South Platte River and created collectives and recruited big corporations to build larger, more expensive networks of ditches.

And by 1874, before Colorado was even a state, one of the most crucial aspects of water law had surfaced: the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation. The first farmers to irrigate land in time were the first in rights, regardless of their place on the river.

After a quarter century the first reservoirs began to sprout, opening irrigation for land that couldn't previously be irrigated. The first wells had also surfaced.

But it wasn't until the 1950s that wells had truly spread. Periods of drought and advancements in well technology made it easier for farmers to find water.

It wasn't until 1957 that the state legislature said farmers needed a well permit to drill.

After a study a decade later, it was discovered that the aquifer holds 10 million acre feet of water, proving that water issues at the time were a symptom of haphazard and unplanned use instead of lack of resources.

So two years later, the legislature passed the Colorado Water Right Determination and Administration Act (the 1969 Act), which said well users could pump water only if they prevent injury to senior water right owners. They had to replace their water usage in time, location and amount of what they used in a process known as augmentation.

HB 1278

It's that last act -- the 1969 Act -- that legislators and farmers think might be behind some of the issues with water tables now.

Recharge projects that deliver water back to surface right owners in the time, place and volume it would have originally reached the river have led to reports of high groundwater levels, some believe.

The two locations primarily affected, according to CWI charts, are southwest Weld County and Logan County around the South Platte River.

Some think the problems are caused by excessive augmentation of aquifers and lack of groundwater pumping, while others think the issues are natural and that people are building in areas with naturally high water tables.

"How surreal it must be to have water in your basement, yet you can't turn on your well," said James Eklund, representing the governor from the State Attorney General's Office.

The study was approved to evaluate whether current water laws and rules in the South Platte River Basin both protect senior water rights and maximize beneficial use for surface and groundwater in the basin.

But it's also supposed to determine which areas within the basin's high groundwater levels adversely impact and what causes the higher levels to begin with. It's also supposed to show a base for implementation of measures to lessen adverse impacts in high groundwater areas.

Waskom said CWI would first collect and organize data, then map the groundwater, evaluate the existing groundwater level analysis from the U.S. Geological Survey and educate the public and stakeholders.

"The South Platte is a very complex river system," Eklund said. "There aren't any silver bullets. There aren't any simple solutions."

Waskom said he isn't in a rush to post data the group receives, especially if they don't yet know what it means. But they'll post a monthly status report, regardless.

One community member asked if the study would look back far enough at the data. Waskom said they'd collect data as far back as they could (even into the 1940s), but the paucity of data from earlier years makes it difficult to use any of it effectively.

He said it'd be hard to look at the whole basin from those numbers, though he'd like to if it were possible.

'Civil dialogue,' reaction

CWI also facilitated what one CWI member called a "civil dialogue" between Robert Sakata, of Sakata Farms in Brighton, and Joe Frank, of Sterling and the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District.

The two, who were put together to represent a wide range of perspectives on issues, tended to agree more than not on most of the questions.

On the issue of high groundwater, Frank said researchers couldn't just use water table levels to look at the impact of water augmentations; they needed to fully study the river.

Sakata said they could use and analyze the aquifer more as a storage basin, but agreed it was more complicated.

"Whether there can be a buffer, the geology is so specific you won't be able to do that," he said. "You want to see if that's even an option. You can only fill it so full before you start seeing impacts of high water tables."

They both agreed that it would be better if farmers could store more water during high volume times.

But for Sakata, the issue was more on passing off reliance down the line of farmers.

"We're just kind of building a house of cards," he said. "We're so dependent on the next person doing the same thing and the next person doing the same thing . . . any one of those layers of those cards is taken away, the whole system collapses on itself.

"How we coordinate that effort is so important."

Gene Manuel, the ag representative for the South Platte Round Table, said his biggest concern was the solution would pit "ag versus ag," saying wells and augmentation would benefit some types of agriculture over others.

He was also concerned that, similarly, the measures would pit "city versus ag."

Another Sterling resident was concerned that measures wouldn't address neighborhood pumping issues. He said he couldn't find a place to pump water to without placing 1,800 feet of pipe to a suitable property, which would cost upward of $100,000.

Sakarta, asked who was in charge of making the recommendations and acting on them, explained that CWI would make the recommendations to the Colorado Legislature.

It would then be up to them to implement any measures.

Still, some recommendations for common issues such as high groundwater in residential areas would be vented to the public.

Whatever the solution, it will require public input to benefit everyone.

"We're going to have to figure out . . . water management, whether that means storage or infrastructure or administration," he said earlier in the meeting. "It's got to work for all water uses, or be a decent solution."

Sakata said CWI would return in the next two to three months for an update.

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